A system that digitally processes customer
transactions for a major pipeline network in the U.S. was shut down
Monday after a cyber attack.

The electronic data interchange provided by
third-party Energy Services Group LLC for Energy Transfer Partners's
natural gas pipeline system was attacked Monday and will be hobbled
until "further notice," Energy Transfer said in a notice to
shippers.

… The EDI system, designed to cut costs and
boost speed, is used to conduct business through a
computer-to-computer exchange of documents.

Alabama has officially joined the data
breach notification party. Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed Act No.
2018-396 into law on March 28, 2018. The law will take
effect on May 1, 2018. Although it was last in the country to enact
such a data security law, Alabama’s new law will immediately take
its place among the most stringent in the nation.

Read more of this Ballard Spahr article, courtesy
of JDSupra, below:

Strange
that DHS didn’t look for devices like this as soon as they became
aware that the capability existed. Did they think no one else was
technically advanced enough to build their own? I wonder how many
governments were listening to Hillary Clinton’s cell phone
conversations? (Good image of a StingRay)

The U.S. government has acknowledged the existence
in Washington D.C. of what appear to be devices that could be used by
foreign spies and criminals to track individual cellphones and
intercept calls and messages, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

In a March 26 letter to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.,
the Department of Homeland Security admitted that it "has
observed anomalous activity in the [Washington D.C. area] that
appears to be consistent with International Mobile Subscriber
Identity (IMSI) catchers." DHS added that it had not determined
the type of devices in use or who might have been operating them, nor
did it say how many it detected or where.

However, a DHS official who spoke on condition of
anonymity because the agency's reply to Wyden has not been publicly
released told AP that the devices were detected in a 90-day trial
that began in January 2017 ...

… The devices work by tricking mobile devices
into locking onto them instead of legitimate cell towers, revealing
the exact location of a particular cellphone. More sophisticated
versions can eavesdrop on calls by forcing phones to step down to
older, unencrypted 2G wireless technology. Some attempt to plant
malware.

… Christopher Krebs, the top official in the
department's National Protection and Programs Directorate, noted in
the letter that DHS lacks
the equipment and funding to detect Stingrays even though
their use by foreign governments "may threaten U.S. national and
economic security."

… Legislators
have been raising alarms about the use of Stingrays in the capital
since at least 2014, when Goldsmith and other
security-company researchers conducted public sweeps that located
suspected unauthorized devices near the White House, the Supreme
Court, the Commerce Department and the Pentagon, among other
locations.

Interesting how long it takes Facebook to find out
what is happening on its own servers.

Facebook head of security Alex Stamos today
announced that roughly 140 Facebook and Instagram accounts, as well
as 138 Facebook Pages controlled by the Internet Research Agency
(IRA) have been removed from its platforms. IRA is best known as a
state-sponsored propaganda machine that has disseminated Russian
propaganda for years and employs hundreds of so-called trolls.

In February, U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller
indicted a dozen
current or former IRA employees, as well as IRA
funder Evgeny Prigozhin, for their roles in spreading
misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms from 2014
to 2016. The Facebook and Instagram accounts shut down today were
aimed primarily at Russian-speaking populations within Russia and
other parts of the world, with one Page garnering more than 1 million
followers.

Donald
Trump’s presidential campaign has boasted often that it made
better use of Facebook Inc.’s advertising tools than Hillary
Clinton’s campaign did. An internal Facebook white paper,
published days after the
election, shows the company’s data scientists agree.

… The paper, obtained by Bloomberg and
discussed here for the first time, describes in granular detail the
difference between Trump’s campaign, which was focused on finding
new donors, and Clinton’s campaign, which concentrated on ensuring
Clinton had broad appeal. The data scientist says 84 percent of
Trump’s budget asked people on Facebook to take an action, like
donating, compared with 56 percent of Clinton’s.

… Trump ran 5.9 million different versions of
ads during the presidential campaign and rapidly tested them to
spread those that generated the most Facebook engagement, according
to the paper. Clinton ran 66,000 different kinds of ads in the same
period.

Amazon has held early exploratory discussions to
buy Flipkart, the newspaper reported citing unidentified people, who
said a deal with Walmart is more likely to go through. The world’s
biggest retailer is closing
in on acquiring 55% of Flipkart through a mix of primary and
secondary share purchases that could value the Indian company at $21
billion, according to the report.

Trump's
call to militarize border comes as illegal crossings last year were
lowest since 1971

… He seized on reports of a caravan
of over a thousand migrants who have been dispersing in Oaxaca,
Mexico. According to the Mexican government, the caravan has taken
place every year at this time since 2010.

… While presidents
have in the past sent the National Guard to the border to assist
Customs and Border Patrol, they did not act as law enforcement
personnel.

ReCall
Study Time is a Chrome extension that is designed to help you
stop wasting time on social media sites and get back on task. With
the extension installed and enabled you'll see a big reminder to get
back on task whenever you try to open Facebook, Twitter, YouTube,
Google+, or Instagram in a new browser tab. You can ReCall Study
Time to block you from those sites for two hours or for 24 hours.

… Stay
Focusd is a similar Chrome extension. Stay Focusd works by
setting daily time limits for viewing social media sites.

Links

About Me

I live in Centennial Colorado. (I'm not actually 100 years old., but I hope to be some day.) I'm an independant computer consultant, specializing in solving problems that traditional IT personnel tend to have difficulty with... That includes everything from inventorying hardware & software, to converting systems & data, to training end-users. I particularly enjoy taking on projects that IT has attempted several times before with no success. I also teach at two local Universities: everything from Introduction to Microcomputers through Business Continuity and Security Management. My background includes IT Audit, Computer Security, and a variety of unique IT projects.